Thursday, March 3, 2011

Really Now?

So I was walking back to my dorm today after my class finished.

Luckily the teacher for my child and adolescent psychology class decided to let us out of class a few minutes early since it was such a nice day and she wanted us to enjoy every minute of it that we could.

Anyway, I was walking back to my dorm, and on my way there is a large stretch of metered parking spaces in front of a building which houses some of the largest lecture classes on our campus.

I was walking along, minding my own business, and suddenly I encounter a meter-cop starting to write up tickets for a few of the cars parked at these meters. Now I knew for a fact that the people who these cars belonged to were undoubtedly in class in one of the huge lecture halls, and they were also undoubtedly going to finished with their classes *very* soon. When I say very soon, I mean within the next 5 minutes these students would be rushing out of their classes, hopping into their cars, and most likely leaving the campus as fast as they can.

For some reason, thinking about this meter-cop giving hundreds of dollars worth of tickets to students who probably can't afford it (who in college can really afford anything else), especially when they would be moving their cars soon anyway really infuriated me.

Reaching into my pocket, I felt around for as much spare change as I had. Remarkably, I had about two dollars in change (thank you McDonald's for being dumb last weekend and running out of single dollar bills). As quick as I could, I started walking down the sidewalk in front of the meter cop, putting money into all of the expired meters. The response that I received from the cop was quite priceless. Not only did he give me a look of contempt of which I have not received in some time, but he appeared to be absolutely livid.

There was of course, nothing that he could do about the matter, as once I put the money into the meters for these people who I did not know, they were saved.

So now I have two questions to ask...

Why was the cop so upset about this? I understand that he loosing out on some money for the state, and I guess for his precinct... but seriously man, does he really enjoy taking the money out of college student's bank accounts like that?

Secondly, would you do the same? Share a bit of change with someone that you don't even know like this? What would you do in this situation?

21 comments:

I totally would and have done it beforeI saw a meter cop also writing out ticketsdowntown though and I saw a meter that was expired so i put in ten cents since thats the only one i saw expired out of like 6 i passed felt good afterwards lolTake care

Yeah, in my opinion he probably didn't care about the money so much as losing his authority. He probably felt like you were doing it just to thumb your nose at him, which can get pretty infuriating for anyone.